Transcript

NASA has begun decommissioning its only nuclear reactor test facility
in the U.S. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Schaefer has more:

The Plum Brook Test Reactor near Sandusky, Ohio was designed to study the
effects of radiation on materials used in space flight. It operated for 11
years and was shut down in 1973 after NASA decided not to pursue manned
flights to Mars. The two reactors at the site will both be removed and
sent to low-level waste disposal facilities in North Carolina and Utah.
Keith Peecook is NASA Plum Brook’s Senior Project Engineer. He says the
agency chose to clean up the site to the highest level of safety.

“A family could take up residence on this site – could live on the site – raising their crops – drinking the groundwater, and the level of exposure that would result from the past history of the site would still not represent a health risk to them.”

De-commissioning should be complete by 2007. The Plum Brook test reactor
cost about 15-million dollars to build. It will cost almost 165-million
dollars to demolish.

In December of 2000, several states (including Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio) failed to submit new air pollution rules to the U.S. EPA. To avoid penalties, the EPA gave the states more time to submit the new rules. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports on one state that just beat the new deadline:

Transcript

In December of 2000, several states (including Illinois, Indiana,
Michigan, and Ohio) failed to submit new air pollution rules to the U.S.
EPA. To avoid penalties, the EPA gave the statesmore time to submit
the new rules. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports
on one state that just beat the new deadline:

The U.S. EPA is requiring the states to reduce nitrogen oxide, or NOx
emissions from power plants by 70 percent. The agency says Ohio releases more NOx emissions than any other state.

The country’s largest coal burning power plant is in southeast Ohio. It’s owned by American Electric Power. Company spokesman Tom Ayres says most power plants began working to curb emissions in 1997 after a change in the federal clean air act.

“AEP is involved in an expenditure program totaling approximately 1.6 billion dollars to install technology called selective catalytic reduction, or SCR, to capture emissions of NOx.”

AEP ran into trouble with this new technology at its Cheshire, Ohio plant.

A chemical reaction created an excess of sulfuric acid … which turned the
air blue. Many power plants plan to install or have installed similar systems.
But so far, power companies say they’ve avoided similar problems.

Transcript

Thirty-nine dams around the Great Lakes region will be removed in the coming year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

The removals are part of a nationwide effort to remove 63 dams that are in poor condition or have outlived their intended purposes. Environmental groups are hailing the move. Eric Eckl is a spokesman for American Rivers. He says removing dams will have numerous positive effects:

“The removal of these dams will start their return to health. It can improve water quality, it can cause the fisheries in the river to rebound, it can create new types of recreational opportunities there.”

Eckl also says the cause safety problems because they create drowning hazards and are at risk of collapsing. He says while the large number of dams scheduled for removal is an encouraging sign, there are still thousands of aging dams in the Great Lakes region that should be removed as soon as possible.

Efforts to re-introduce the trumpeter swan in the Midwest are exceeding expectations. In fact, officials in one state are trying to find out if the swan population can now grow on its own. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

Efforts to re-introduce the trumpeter swan in the Midwest are exceeding expectations. In fact, officials in one state are trying to find out if the swan population can now grow on its own. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

(sound of trumpeters being released)

Six years ago, 14 trumpeter swans were released on Honest John’s Lake in
northern Wisconsin…

(honk honk honk)

The idea is to bring back the slow, low-flying bird hunted to extinction in
the 19th century for their beautiful white feathers. The goal was to have 20
nesting pairs returning to Wisconsin by the year 2000. Trumpeter Swan Recovery Program Director Sumner Mattison says they’ve passed that goal…with 51 nesting
pairs in Wisconsin.

“The wild nesting pairs are producing enough young so we don’t have to worry about restocking a this point, in fact, we have surpassed 50 young per year over the last six years.”

(sound of release)

Mattison says similar programs are also meeting success in Michigan,
Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Ohio.

Car makers are gearing up to fight a law recently passed by the state of California to control greenhouse gas emissions. The likely court challenge is the latest development in a historic battle with environmentalists over fuel economy standards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:

Transcript

Car makers are gearing up to fight a law recently passed by the state of California to control greenhouse gas emissions. The likely court challenge is the latest development in a historic battle with environmentalists over fuel economy standards. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Halpert filed this report:

The law is the first in the country to regulate emissions of greenhouse gasses. It requires that cars meet emissions standards for gasses, like carbon dioxide, by 2009. The measure is considered a huge victory for environmentalists. They were defeated recently when Congress vetoed plans to increase fuel economy standards.

Automakers were behind that defeat. They’ve consistently opposed plans to significantly tighten mileage requirements. They fear the result would be a bevy of pint-sized cars that consumers won’t buy.

Now, they’re worried about the California mandate. Eron Shosteck, with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says that environmentalists tried to illegally force requirements in California that they lost on the federal level.

“This is a fuel economy law. Fuel economy is something that the federal government has reserved unto itself. States cannot set their own fuel economy standards. It’s not fair to Californians and it’s not fair to any other state that chooses to go in that direction. Only the Department of Transportation can set fuel economy standards, so our challenge is going to be that this is illegal.”

Shosteck says that having one federal law prevents automakers from having to design cars to meet a patchwork of state rules. But Russell Long, executive director of Bluewater Network, which drafted the California legislation, says the bill doesn’t explicitly mandate fuel economy improvements.

“We think that we’ve crafted this legislation appropriately so that we’re targeting the greenhouse gas emissions themselves and we can do that. We feel that that’s lawful and California has led on things like this before and we intend to lead again.”

Because California has been plagued with the nation’s worst smog, the state has historically been the first to require pollution innovations – like catalytic converters and unleaded gasoline.

Long is optimistic that this latest law can survive a court challenge. And if it does, he says California once again could start a major national movement, this time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from passenger vehicles.

Researcher Barb McCarthy inspects a container of peat used to treat household wastewater. She says peat is very good at removing pathogens.

In many places around the Great Lakes, people depend on on-site septic systems to handle their household wastewater. The number is growing as people move to rural areas and retire to lake cabins. Health officials say too many systems aren’t working properly, and are polluting wells, lakes and rivers. Now, people are beginning to experiment with new kinds of septic systems that might work better than the traditional trench system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2002/07/hemphill_072902.mp3

Transcript

In many places around the Great Lakes, people depend on on-site septic systems to handle their household wastewater. The number is growing as people move to rural areas and retire to lake cabins. Health officials say too many systems aren’t working properly, and are polluting wells, lakes and rivers. Now, people are beginning to experiment with new kinds of septic systems that might work better than the traditional trench system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Not everyone lives on a sewer line, and people who don’t, need to treat the waste from their toilets, showers, and washing machines right where they live. More than a quarter of new homes are built with septic systems in their backyards.

Conventional septic setups start with a tank, where solids settle to the bottom and get pumped out every few years. The liquid flows to a leaching field, where it percolates through soil. Organisms in the soil absorb pathogens, and the wastewater is supposed to be clean by the time it reaches the groundwater.

In northeastern Minnesota, the theory bumps up against the reality of the region’s geology. Health officials in St. Louis County, near Lake Superior, say as many as three-fourths of the septic systems aren’t working properly.

The trouble is, in many places here, there’s hardly any soil. You often stand on bedrock. What soil there is tends to be heavy clay, which won’t easily allow water to percolate through it. And the many lakes and rivers mean the groundwater can be just a few inches below the surface.

Researchers at the Natural Resources Research Institute in Duluth are testing several experimental systems.

“The module peat filters are ones that people are kind of using a lot in this area.”

The NRRI’s Barb McCarthy says a modular peat filter – self-contained in a plastic tub about the size of a refrigerator – can clean up the wastewater generated by one or two people. She says peat is very good at removing pathogens in the waste.

“And we think that part of that is because of the biological community that you find in a peat filter, it’s probably dominated more by the fungi and those type of organisms.”

McCarthy says they’ve seen everything from worms to frogs living in the peat filters.

Dan Karban installed a peat system when he built a house on Wild Rice Lake north of Duluth. Karban says he decided against a traditional septic system.

“All I heard was they might work, they might not work. So they were really subject to fail. And I didn’t want that. So I was willing to spend the extra money to get something that I felt was going to not only last longer but also look more appealing on our land site here.”

The tubs of peat are buried in the ground. As the water works its way through the peat filter, the organisms clean it up. Then it’s pumped to a leaching field, which looks just like the rest of the yard.

Karban paid about twice as much for the peat system as he would have for a traditional system, but he’s delighted with the way it’s practically invisible in his yard. And it even warns him, with beepers and lights, when he’s got a problem.

“Was it last spring we had all the rain and we had alarms going off everywhere, because the leaching field was so saturated with water that it wasn’t taking any more water. It was telling the pumps not to pump any more water. So we needed to cut back on our water usage.”

In a traditional septic system, there would be no warning – your nose would tell you when the trenches were too full.

More and more people are deciding to live at the lake instead of just visiting on weekends. At Grand Lake north of Duluth, people have converted a lot of cabins to year-round homes. Their sewage was feeding the algae and the lake was turning green.

“If you want to keep your lake, we found out from the other lakes around here that the overload is just too much and everything blooms in the summer. The lake becomes un-useable in the nicest months of the year.”

Gene Curnow and his neighbors got together and built a wetland to handle their wastewater.

Each house has a tank for the solids. Pumps send the liquids to the wetland, built away from the lake. Bacteria among the roots of the plants break down the pathogens in the water. Curnow says the lake has been cleaner since they built the wetland.

“The nutrients are not getting into the lake like they were. And that’s what this does, it brings the nutrients out here and lets the plants eat them.”

People in Scandanavia have been treating their household sewage with constructed wetlands and peat filters for years. But rules in Minnesota and most other states aren’t set up to permit them. Health officials in northeastern Minnesota are working on changing the rules.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.

The violence began in 1999, during protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. Since then, police and anti-globalization protestors have clashed at events around the world. But the demonstrations at the most recent meeting of world leaders were peaceful. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, many credit a new approach to policing:

Transcript

The violence began in 1999, during protests at the World Trade Organization
meeting in Seattle. Since then, police and anti-globalization protestors have
clashed at events around the world. But the demonstrations at the most recent
meeting of world leaders were peaceful. As the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, many credit a new approach to policing:

(Sounds of crowd: “G8, Shut it down!”)

Hundreds of protestors are winding their way through the streets of downtown
Ottawa. They’re here to send a message to the leaders of the eight largest
industrialized nations meeting in Canada.

They argue G8 policies are benefiting corporations – and hurting people in the third world. And they’re concerned about the Western leaders’ environmental track record.
David Bernanz is a member of the Bikesheviks. They spent two days biking here from Montreal. And they want Westerners to reduce their dependence on
automobiles.

“It really is not a very sane approach to organizing our lives and we’d be much better off with better public transport, more bike paths and that’s the kind of thing we’re promoting.”

Like most protestors, Bernanz is nonviolent. But in the past few years, these marches have disintegrated into battles. Some have thrown rocks and molotov cocktails.
Police have lobbed tear gas and pepper spray. This time, both sides expected more of the same. But Royal Canadian Mounted Police inspector Jean Yves Lemoine knew something had to change. He was in Quebec City last year when violent protests
broke out as leaders discussed the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas.
He says he never wants to experience that again.

“I was on the line in Quebec City and I saw lots of things there that to me, didn’t work. When my partner got a molotov cocktail on him and he started to burn…he wasn’t injured but I saw lots of people in the crowd – same thing. It was just violence. Violence didn’t resolve anything and after all this, nobody knew why they came and protested. We only
remembered the violence.”

Last fall, it was announced the G8 leaders would meet
outside of Calgary. Inspector Lemoine got to work.

He helped create police liaison teams in both Calgary and Ottawa – where protests were planned. And he started showing up at the protestors’ meetings – trying to establish communication.

“At first, what can we find out about each other, what common grounds do we have, and lots of people were saying, ‘you don’t have any’ but that’s not true. We do have some. It’s a question of education, eh?”

Lemoine encountered skepticism – from both the police
and the protestors. Activists in Ottawa refused to participate in discussions, but Lemoine kept trying.

And he met with his colleagues, explaining the protestor’s rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But Lemoine knew communication wasn’t enough – the
police needed to diffuse the tension during the protest itself.

During a similar meeting of the G-20 in Ottawa last fall, hundreds of riot police lined the streets. There were complaints that police dogs attacked innocent protestors.
This time, dogs and riot police were on call, but not visible.

(sound of marching)

Clusters of uniformed officers chat on the street corners as the protestors march by.
Others patrol on bicycles. Lemoine and his liaison team are right in with the
marchers, wearing polo shirts that say police liaison. They know the organizers of the protest have called for graffiti and property damage. And there are large groups of marchers dressed in black, their faces covered with bandanas.
But Lemoine just keeps talking.

“Activists were coming to see us, people with bandanas on, they were pulling it down and saying, what are you doing? Well, I’m just a liaison, I want to make sure whatever’s happening here, that it’s okay with you so we can work together.”

Despite fears, the protests were mostly peaceful. Activists like Samer Elahtraash believe the change in police tactics was responsible.

“It pretty much proves what we’ve been saying all along. Every time there is a riot, it is a reaction to the police, to them coming with visors down and no badges and beating up on protestors. When they refrain from doing that, there’s no violence to speak of
whatsoever.”

But not everyone is convinced the Royal Canadian Mounted Police approach will work elsewhere. Jim Pugel is the assistant police chief in Seattle. His city continues to deploy riot police for large demonstrations.

“It depends on the nature of the event, the emotional atmosphere and the intelligence gathered ahead of time and also the current environment.”

(sound of protests up)

Prior to the protests, the RCMP’s intelligence unit predicted there would be violence.
Inspector Jean-Yves Lemoine would like to think they prevented that – by using tools he says are less intimidating, but even more effective.

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:

Transcript

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:

A twenty-year program to restore peregrine falcons is seeing new signs of
success this summer: hatchlings.

Experts estimate that as many as 300 peregrine falcons will hatch this year.

In the sixties, DDT all but wiped out the population. But the peregrine
falcon is back, thanks to a ban on the pesticide and conservation efforts by the Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program.

Since the eighties, this regional partnership has released birds bred in captivity. Today, it’s monitoring peregrine falcons at 30 sites across 13 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.

Mark Martell is a conservation coordinator with the restoration program. He
says the challenge now is to keep the population thriving.

“We don’t have a lot of experience with taking a species from zero
individuals up to a stable population. So we want to make sure this
population stays stable.”

To do so, Martell says researchers will spend the next 20 years keeping tabs
on the falcons and their chicks.

An Indiana University scientist has developed a computer model that can predict E. coli levels near public beaches. The system could help public health officials who’ve been relying on test results that come too late to be of much help. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

An Indiana University scientist has developed a computer model that can predict E. coli levels near public beaches. The system could help public health officials who’ve been relying on test results that come too late to be of much help. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

E. coli is a bacteria that can reach dangerous levels in the water, usually when big rainstorms flush untreated water into nearby lakes and streams. But traditional tests for E. coli take 24 to 48 hours. Indiana University hydrologist Greg Oliphant says the delay is a serious problem for keeping people safe when they go to the beach.

“Regulators were saying go ahead and go in the water, and E. coli was above safe level, and stay out when water turned out to be perfectly safe for full body contact.”

Olyphant has developed a computer model that uses wind, rain, and temperature readings to predict when E. coli levels will be high. The system has been tested in Chicago and Milwaukee and they found it to be about 80% effective. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Transcript

Wildlife managers in Wisconsin are facing a daunting task… how to dispose of thousands of potentially infectious deer carcasses. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gil Halsted reports:

Eighteen deer have tested positive for chronic wasting disease in an area of southwestern Wisconsin. To keep the disease from spreading, the state plans to kill 30-thousand deer in the area. But because the disease is related to mad cow disease, county landfills are refusing to bury the deer carcasses. The fear is that the mutant protein known as a prion that causes the disease could seep out of the landfill and pose a threat to human health.

Topf Wells is a spokesperson for Dane County, one of several counties that have refused to accept carcasses.

“The problem that many people are concerned about is that these prions are probably not destroyed by the forces in a landfill that lead to the decomposition of a lot of material.”

If counties don’t change their minds, the state may have to store thousands of deer carcasses in cold storage units during this fall’s hunt. Incinerating carcasses is another option. But at 75 dollars a deer it could prove too costly.